Storage Industry Leaders Attend Largest-Ever SAS Plugfest Sponsored by STA and Hosted by UNH-IOL

November 1-5 Plugfest Brings SAS Manufacturers Together to Assure Delivery of Interoperable SAS Products in 2005

SAN FRANCISCO and DURHAM, NH — Dec. 6, 2004 — The largest-ever multi-company SAS plugfest to date brought more than 100 engineers together to fine-tune their company’s storage products and to foster interoperability between Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) storage devices, the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) and the SCSI Trade Association (STA) announced today.

SAS is the rapidly-advancing, high-speed alternative to SCSI technology being used today. It represents a reincarnation of the long-established SCSI protocol in a powerful form designed to meet the ever-growing performance requirements of enterprise data centers.

Sponsored by STA, the third and final plugfest of 2004 was held during the first week of November. The plugfest provided a crucible for testing interoperability between different manufacturers’ SAS and Serial ATA (SATA) products, many of which are expected to enter the market in early 2005. While some attendees tested systems, most tested components – the chips, boards, hard disk drives, cables and connectors – that will be sold to OEMs building and selling tomorrow’s data storage solutions.

Among the companies attending the November Plugfest were STA members Adaptec, Amphenol, Broadcom, CATC/LeCroy, Catalyst, Dell, EqualLogic, Finisar, Fujitsu, HP, Hitachi, I-TECH, Intel, LSI Logic, Maxtor, NEC, PMC-Sierra, Seagate and Vitesse.

“2004 marks the culmination of three years’ investment in the development of the SAS protocol and products,” commented Harry Mason, President of the SCSI Trade Association and Director, Industry Marketing, LSI Logic. “We couldn’t be more pleased with the results of the three plugfests held this year. Industry participation increased with each event as did the maturity of SAS components, subsystems, systems and test coverage. The benefits are already apparent and will greatly improve SAS’s acceptance during the early deployment phase.”

“We’ve seen very positive progress through the three plugfests we’ve held so far toward both fine-tuning the standards and fostering industry-wide interoperability,” said David Woolf, a manager of the UNH-IOL SAS Consortium. “Cooperation between manufacturers at this level can only help drive market adoption. We are now in the process of building a permanent SAS test bed of consortium-member companies that we hope will serve between the plugfests as the SAS and SATA reference environment for the industry.”

The next STA Plugfest has been tentatively scheduled for the week of April 25, 2005, although an interim group test may be scheduled earlier in the year. The UNH-IOL also runs SAS and related SATA Consortiums, separate associations of companies building new products and interested in testing them on an ongoing basis.

About the SCSI Trade Association
The SCSI Trade Association was established in 1995 to provide a focal point for members to communicate the benefits of SCSI to the industry. STA promotes the understanding and use of SCSI technology and influences the evolution of SCSI standards to meet future industry needs. The Association has an eight-member Board of Directors, which oversees the Marketing Communications and Technology Committees and all STA activities. To subscribe to Serial Storage Wire, STA’s free Serial Attached SCSI newsletter, please visit: http://info.serialstoragewire.com/mk/get/AMER_STA_1203_REG?F_0=STAN&campaign=ST4& program=CO. For more information, please visit the STA web site at www.scsita.org, send an email to info@scsita.org or call the STA office at (415) 561-6273.

About the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory
Established in 1988, the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) is a non-profit organization that offers comprehensive interoperability and conformance-based testing through 19 technology-based groups, called consortiums. Test solutions created at the UNH-IOL offer a set of methods to increase interoperability through protocol operations, signaling, point-to-point and multi-system scenarios. For more information, visit the UNH-IOL website at: www.iol.unh.edu.

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